Archive for January, 2010

Ed has been shooting bike related events in NYC for years. Here is his new promo card, it’s got a shot of me playing bike polo in The Pit, kind of like that. And that reminds me, photos are worth money. If a mag or paper asks you for a picture they want to print, and they sell ad space, ask about the rates. Meaning the pay rate to publish your work. Because when you give away your photos, people like Ed have a hard time making a living at being a photographer. And you miss out on your payday.

So Gus was in New York this week playing some polo in The Pit. He was telling me about how he’s in school for photography and posting some of his favorite shots on his website gustavhoiland.com. Later I looked up his site and browsed the photos and descriptions he has posted. Some of them I thought are really good and interesting. Like this one of ZACH that I had to send the link to the man himself. ZACH emailed me back happy that his comment need not be approved and asked me to post it here. It’s at least worth a look. http://gustavhoiland.com/2010/01/18/just-go-to-new-york/

This story comes from the San Francisco Examiner sfexaminer.com. Apparently SF has 132 public tennis courts. I think they should take one of those and put up some good boards and turn it into the San Francisco public bike polo court. Being that it’s in California I bet it won’t take the city long to see that if it’s a good idea to build pubic skate parks, it’ll be a good idea to give the bike polo set a place to play. And give them some lights too. That would be really nice.

Bike polo enthusiasts facing hard times

By: Kamala Kelkar

January 24, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO — It has mallets, balls, bicycles and helmets, but bike polo does not have a written right to be on The City’s tennis courts.

Park rangers cited four bike polo players last week at a tennis court in Dolores Park — where they have been knocking the ball around weekly for at least a year — because someone complained to police.

The four among a group of about 20 waiting for a chance to sub in were cited for a violation of failure to obtain a permit. The permit costs about $100.

“This is the first time anyone’s received a ticket,” said Marc Caswell, who was on the sidelines watching as he recovered from a broken arm he sustained while playing. “Occasionally, we’re asked to not ride bikes on the court. We can’t be there. But as far as I can tell, we didn’t even violate any code.”

The City recognized that. Supervisor Bevan Dufty and Recreation and Park Department General Manager Phil Ginsburg told Caswell, who is a project manager with the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, that the four citations would be rescinded.

However, the players, Dufty and Ginsburg are still trying to work out details about where they can play because even though it is not explicitly written in the code, bicycles don’t belong on tennis courts.

The sport is the worldwide spawn of the traditional game played with two teams of three in the 1908 Olympics on a rectangular grass field. But the hard surface makes it easier to manage the ball so it doesn’t go flying all over the place, Caswell said.

The City’s polo players look for two things: pavement and a well-lit area. But he said there are really only two playgrounds that provide their amenities: Mission Playground and Jose Coronado Playground, which have concrete soccer fields. Those sites are already in high demand.

However there are 132 free tennis courts in The City where players can use them on a first-come, first-served basis.

The bike polo players want the one of six courts they use at Dolores Park to become multirecreational. Caswell said the bike polo players once rescheduled their weekly games for another group that uses the court for volleyball.

However, it is still destructive to the court and could technically be unlawful.

Sara is a friend in New York and what seems like years and years ago she brought her old style film camera and made this short of us playing in The Pit. We all got to see her work at one of the first Bike Shorts. Still one of my favorites.

This story about my MKE friends has been all over the web. I heard my friend Bike Snob even wrote about it. Anyway for some reason it reminds me of that movie The Legend of Billie Jean. Last night I listened to about 15 min of some 30+ min radio talk show that took callers to give thoughts on the matter, but as I said, I only listened to the first few min of it because I could only take so much of the hosts bull shit. Not being capable of making a statement of his own thoughts he just added doubt to the statements his callers would give, if they were for or against the arrests. For me, I hope MKE can keep playing in the winter months in a place that they like.
One more thing, Kremin, I tried calling you tonight (and last week) turn your phone on, geez.

The parking structure in O’Donnell Park was a safe haven from the elements, but not the law, for 11 bike polo players who were arrested and ticketed for trespassing on the county-owned property Sunday night.

Jacob Newborn, one of the leaders in the Milwaukee Bike Polo Club, reported that Milwaukee County sheriff’s deputies broke up a game about 6 p.m., then took the participants and players to jail for ticketing and processing. They were released early Monday.

According to Newborn, bike polo players have used the O’Donnell Park garage as a winter venue for five or six years, with a few warnings from county parks workers but no official enforcement action.

“We would just go back after a while,” he said.

Sheriff’s Capt. Aisha Barkow confirmed the enforcement action and said the players had been warned twice previously that they were trespassing and causing damage to the parking structure near the Milwaukee lakefront. County parks representatives offered two alternate locations for their bike polo matches, she said.

On Sunday night, a sheriff’s unit assigned to parks patrol found the players back in O’Donnell Park and arrested them.

“This should not have been a surprise,” Barkow said.

Tickets with forfeitures of $263.50 were issued to those arrested.

Newborn said the arrests would add motivation to the group’s efforts to locate a private indoor play area, while they work on a legal strategy.

“We have to sit down and discuss as a club how we want to approach it in court,” Newborn said. “It will be interesting to see what the judge says when he has 11 trespassing cases in a row.”

As this reaches it’s two years of existing I had to move the site from a friends server to a new one. I made a few changes and I’m still working those out. During the move some things got lost. Like the photos in the how to build a polo mallet section, and a few images in older posts from near the beginning. I posted things the wrong way back then and they did not stand up to the switch. I’ll try to get it fixed.
I’m running a new theme for the site, that’s why it looks new. Tell me if it’s terrible. In the upper right corner there are a couple icons that will appear if you float the mouse there. They change the width of the content and the font size. Maybe find one that works for your screen and tell me if there are any problems. (for me I had to set the content to the narrow setting to be able to adjust the font setting. Then I changed the content width to fit the screen)
I added a calendar that I’m still trying to figure out, and a weather widget set to NYC.

I am one of the regional reps elected to NA Hardcourt last week. Even though I have not made many posts about this here on hardcourtbikepolo.com I plan to be involved with the others and hope to see progress from the group.